Blog Post

6waves Lolapps bulks up some more, acquires Escalation Studios

Social gaming company 6waves Lolapps (which is now going by the shortened moniker “6L”) is continuing its quest to take on industry leader Zynga. (s znga) The company is announcing Wednesday the acquisition of Escalation Studios, a Dallas, Texas-based mobile game company.

Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but the five-year-old Escalation is a sizable company, with 33 full-time staff who are all joining 6L post-deal, bringing the company’s headcount to 210 worldwide. Escalation co-founders Tom Mustaine and Marc Tardiff will become design directors for 6L, while co-founder Shawn Green will become the company’s director of engineering. The Escalation team will continue to operate out of Dallas; the majority of 6L operates out of San Francisco and Hong Kong.

The acquisition is meant to get 6L more deeply into the mobile gaming space, which will be especially key as it is focusing on international growth. 6L Chief Product Officer Arjun Sethi said in an interview:

“We’re now the single largest publisher of games across multiple social networks, not just Facebook, and our activity is about 50 percent in the United States and 50 percent international. What’s made us successful on social, we want to adapt and make sure we can run full steam ahead on mobile.”

Despite its somewhat lackluster post-IPO stock market performance, Zynga is still the social gaming space’s clear leader. But it’s also clear 6L isn’t backing down from the opportunity to provide real competition in the space. By taking a stand in the booming international and mobile spaces, it looks like the company is playing its cards very wisely at the moment.